active vs passive voice in scientific writing

ACTIVE VS PASSIVE VOICE IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING MANUALS

Here is an example from the same paper, in this case a use of the passive voice to avoid using “We” in the sentence:Įxample: “If it is assumed that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric … it is found that only specific pairs of bases can bond together.”īelow is an example of an active voice version of this sentence:Įxample: “If we assume that the bases only occur in the structure in the most plausible tautomeric … we find that only specific pairs of bases can bond together.”Īs you can see, using active voice shortened the sentence slightly. Here, the subject is “Pauling and Corey” and they are the actors, the doers, in the sentence.

Pauling and Corey are the actors, the ones who proposed the structure.īelow is this sentence rewritten so that it is in active voice:Įxample: “Pauling and Corey have already proposed a structure for nucleic acid.” Here is an example of this kind of writing from a historic paper, Watson and Crick’s 1953 report in Naturedescribing their discovery of the structure of DNA:Įxample: “A structure for nucleic acid has already been proposed by Pauling and Corey.”Īs you can see, the subject of the sentence is “structure,” yet “structure” is not the doer of the action (“proposed”).

Writers were to avoid drawing attention to themselves so that the science being described would be foremost. One rationale for prohibiting this use of the first person as the subject of a sentence was that it would distract readers from the science. The reason so much scientific writing until recently has used the passive voice is largely that researchers were told ( passive voice) not to use “I” or “we” in writing. In scientific writing, passive voice has been the norm for some time, but things are changing. This sentence also is now in active voice, with the subject (friend) performing the action (gave). The above sentence is now in active voice, with the subject (the valet) performing the action (parked). We can make the voice of these sentences active, with the subject as the doer.Įxample: The valet parked the car in the wrong space.

In each sentence, the subject is not the “doer” of the action, but on the receiving end of it. In this sentence, the subject is “she,” but someone else (“a friend) is doing the action of giving a book. Instead, the valet is performing the action.Įxample: She was given the book by a friend. In this sentence, “car” is the subject, but the voice of the sentence is passive because the car is not doing the parking. Instead, the action is being done to it.Įxample: The car has been parked by the valet in the wrong parking space. When the “voice” of a sentence is passive, then the subject of the sentence is not doing the action.

ACTIVE VS PASSIVE VOICE IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING MANUALS

In fact, style manuals for academic writers often advice strongly against the use of personal subjects.As you review guidelines from journals you’re considering for manuscript submission, you may come across instructions to avoid using “passive voice” or “passive construction.” What does that mean, and why do journals want you to avoid it? What is it? For example, in descriptions of experiments, interviews, and other kinds of data-gathering activities, the active researcher need not be explicitly mentioned. When necessary, it may, however, be expressed as the complement of the preposition by, as in the following example: (1) The patients were interviewed by a team of medical students.The 'short', agentless passive (without the by-phrase) is very common in scientific texts, probably due to its impersonal flavour. unexpressed.Ī majority of passives resemble the example above in not expressing the subject of the corresponding active clause. Often, active clauses have a subject which refers to a 'doer', or agent (as in the example), or to an external cause (as in The wind destroyed the house.). The passive provides a means of selecting another element as the grammatical subject, while leaving the agent, cause, etc. one that occurs with an object) can be transformed into one where the object appears as the subject, as in the following pair: Active: Thus, normally, a clause with a transitive verb (i.e. In English grammar the category voice refers to the systematic correspondence between so called active and passive clauses.

Active vs passive voice in scientific writing